


Laments

by rainbowodyssey



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Gen, POV First Person, Trojan War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-13
Updated: 2013-05-14
Packaged: 2017-12-11 18:32:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/801849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowodyssey/pseuds/rainbowodyssey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An ongoing project to explore the Trojan War through the eyes of Kassandra.  Enjoy!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Paris tells me I should be pleased, for it is good that I am wise. It is easy to tell that this is a hollow compliment, the nicety of a brother to his sister, especially a brother who would much rather be in bed with his wife than anywhere else. I tug the muscles on the right side of my lips, tug the ones on the left. Paris is all appearance, so even a sham of a smile placates him. He believes this of me, at least.

Apollo taught me, however indirectly, that knowledge is hardly the same as wisdom. There is a value to wisdom, and Paris is indeed right that it is good to be wise. Yet, I have no share of wisdom. I think I am the only seer of this Earth who is called unwise by her countrymen, and I know that I am the only one who does not fancy herself a wise woman. Knowledge is my lot, and I have stores of it. More knowledge is crammed within my person than glittering gold in father Priam’s treasury or wine in his cellars. And some knowledge, I concede, is as good as wisdom. If the Fates would have my warnings heeded, perhaps knowledge would yield to wisdom, but, of course, the Fates never allow anything that anyone wants. Not _really_.

I am lost in thought and Paris has left the chamber, as is wont to happen nearly any time I am lost in thought. I could take offense, but people always care little what I have to say. Besides, Paris has never put much stock in wisdom.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to take a look at some relationships that we don't see a lot about. This chapter's got to do with Kassandra and her brother, Helenus, who was given the same prophetic powers as she was, but inexplicably didn't warn the way she did. I also wanted to expand on the interaction between the women of Troy, so Kassandra and Helen, Kassandra and Andromache, Kassandra and her mother. Those will come along later.

“If you can tell anyone, you can tell me, sister, please. Please, now stop these hysterics. We’re all worried sick, you know. Father is beside himself, Mother is afraid, no one knows why you’re raving so, but maybe if you told us we could help.”

“Let Father come and speak to me himself then! Let Mother be the one to comfort me, instead of sending a substitute. They are royals, but so am I and they have never treated me this way before, Helenus, I won’t have it!”

“Kassandra, Kassandra, be calm, be still!”

“Don’t! Don’t restrain me, brother – why?!”

“Now, stop this. Tell me what is wrong with you.”

“Nothing. I did nothing and I don’t wish to speak with you anymore.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enter Helen.

She arrives with blood on her gown, and I shriek.

“Get her out, the Furies trail behind her and ruin is on her heels, Father, Father make her _leave_!”

Father, so soft with his other children, clamps his hand, stern and admonishing, on my shoulder. I swallow my words for the sake of decorum, but the blood is not gone. She drags it through the hall with her, spreading it over the marble. Why, why is Mother not saying anything? She does not even flinch as the gore is swept across her floor. Andromache, so easily sickened, does not react. Helenus’ eyes alone are averted. He does not speak.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This the first of a few "vision sequences" or whatever. Basically, they're as close as I can hope to come to what Kassandra's prophetic powers might have shown her. I tried to make the style flowing and overwhelming to best emulate it.

There is fire spreading from the beaches, licking at the seagrass and blackening the crops and people are burning now, cows and sheep but shepherds too and men in brazen armor. 

They hack at the smoke, noxious, but it pours into their lungs and they drop dead to the sand, caked in blood and grit and bodies still twitching and women’s tears, Andromache’s and Mother’s. The smoke, it curls, it winds, it rears like a horse and charges the walls and seeps through the cracks. The city dissolves. When the smoke clears we are there on the ground, before the walls with plundered gold and chains on our arms and there are ships and men, men laughing like hounds and leaping around in funeral games. Not for Father, not for Hector, they are dead, but the games are not for them. Helen has swept the city from the hills with the hem of her gown, but she is being led, her delicate neck in chains like ours. It is a leash.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of my favorites. This chapter has a description of sexual assault. It's not too graphic, but still might be triggering.

I am on the floor of Andromache’s chamber. Hector is anxious in the tents and she is pregnant in the torchlight. She wants a story. I tell her:

_There is a fable I know, of a lovely princess, the daughter of a beautiful city and an illustrious father. She was young, but not too young. Old enough, her mother told them, to devote herself to a god or a husband. She sent her on a journey from the city, along with her beloved brother, trusting their judgment and intelligence. The prince she instructed to Apollo’s temple, to ask the god for a holy purpose. The princess was to follow, and inquire about where she might find a nobleman whose children she could bear. And so, they went. They were received well by the priests, who provided them with the finest accommodations they could muster. They were to sleep in separate chambers, and they would see to their mother’s orders after a night’s rest._

_The princess was awoken, and perhaps the prince as well, some time during that night. At first she believed the day had come, for her room was filled with golden brightness, but it was not day. Lord Apollo himself stood in that room, his locks aflame and his shoulders broad like a wrestler’s. He asked the princess why she had come, and she told him of her search for a husband. At that, he grinned and was suddenly atop her body, splendorous and naked. The princess knew it was imprudent to refuse a god, and she let him embrace her, kiss her, promise her power and luxury and strong, strong sons. He said he would reward her for her beauty, for truly she was the most beautiful woman he’d seen in some time, by granting her a throne in his court of seers. She did not refuse. He blessed her with his first gift, then prepared to bestow his second, but she was afraid and fought and pushed him away. Spurned, he burst with rage and cursed the princess._

_What god has done, nothing can undo, and so Apollo added a condition to the power he had granted. The princess would be denied neither her prophecies nor her ability to tell them, but she would never be believed, not even by those she held dearest. He returned, seething, to Olympus and the princess wept._

Andromache smiles and praises my storytelling.


	6. Chapter 6

Mother used to fuss over my hair.

“It’s red,” she would say, “and so curly. And wherever did you get your bright blue eyes?”

“From the gods, Mother.”

This answer, so innocuous and girlish, simply delighted her, and she would laugh every time, with guffaws as matronly and full as she was.

“So some in the court might suspect, my dear, for your father’s hair was so dark when he was younger, and his eyes the same colors as the Ilian plains.”

Such jests were typical of her, she who was so fond and merry, she who paced the palace halls with footfalls firm and a retinue of children pulling at her dress. She was enamored of children, every child in the city, and they called her mother of a hundred.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The shortest chapter, I think, so far. Sorry u_u

The dust is thick on Hector’s face, on Astyanyx’ limbs, in Andromache’s hair. It is no matter. Two will be buried anyway, and one shorn.


	8. Chapter 8

Helenus visits me in my room. He comments on the view of the Scamander’s banks, lies that he envies the breeze and wishes he could stay here instead of his chamber.

“This room is not a room.”

He knows that they think a view will placate the mad. He knows that they think the breeze is restorative.

“Don’t say silly things like that, Sister. Mother and Father just want you well again. They only do what they know is best.”

“So they do think me mad.”

He evades, making grand exclamations on the quality of my bed linens, the craftsmanship of the mosaic that clutters the floor. I would rather a bedroom be bare than a prison, and he knows this too. Helenus knows nearly everything that I know. His knowledge is perhaps not as virulent, as invasive or manifest as mine. He has told me that he sees the proper way, through dreams handed down from Apollo to Morpheus to him. His prophecy is restrained, contemplative, and private.

“You see the same things, don’t you?”

“Kassandra, now, it’s not that simple –”

“Do you not believe me?”

He bites his lip and furrows his brow. His eyes are set deep in his head, reserved like he is. They do not want to be looked into directly, so I do it to make him uncomfortable. It sets him further on edge. Let him be uneasy, let him feel anxious, let him experience for just a few moments the state in which I exist. He does not turn away. I do not think he can.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Featuring Coroebus, a super cute suitor of Kassandra who y'all should look up. Because he's a cutie and will feature in this story.

“I don’t believe them, you know.”

“Hmm?”

“The things they say about Helen. Her beauty. I don’t believe it.”

“Whatever made you think that?”

“What makes her so special? Yes, fair-haired women are not commonplace, but if you really want to judge using those criteria, then I think red hair must be far more beautiful.”

“You spoil me, Coroebus.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kassandra lapses a little into prophecy in the middle here, thus the style shift.

We watch them arrive on the beach like ants. Mother says they are called Myrmidons, given that name for this reason exactly. They come overnight, set up camp, swarm, carry off fragments of cities ten times their size. A few wear decorated bronze, headpieces bristling and plumed, but most are protected by no more than a few plates, the leather straps that keep them fastened covering altogether more skin than the metal itself. _All of our men are well outfitted_ , someone scoffs, _these are boys in costume playing at war_. The rest pretend to believe her.

The wind is always strong at the wall’s highest points, and we are perched well above the city, but we must brace ourselves against the parapets for the sheer strength of the gusts blowing off the ocean. We are in open air but the smell is stale, like the altar after a sacrifice, like meat and entrails and blood, and it is carried by the wind. These men reek like butchers but there is no scent of livestock. The light hits one man, the man directing the masses, and his hands, his fine cloak, his shining armor are stained with blood. Around his neck like a trophy is a ring of fabric, a gag, and it too is white, girlishly white, and speckled with red. The Furies hang over this man, a cloud of ruin about his head, and he _must_ be Agamemnon. The sun is blocked by a cloud and the lighting dissipates. He is just a general, just a king, no murderer, no filicide. 

I descend from the walls. The sounds of a mother’s wailing and the creaking of a ship at sea make my head ache.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More Helen. I've become very attached to her because I think people give her a bum rap throughout literary history. The picture of Helen given in the Iliad is very compelling to me, and if you guys don't want to read the whole Iliad (which you should, but whatever), you can get a pretty good glimpse in Books 3 and 6. Even in parts of Book 24. I can never get enough of Greco-Roman ladies, so more Helen and more Kassandra for you.

When she is not in bed with my brother, she spends most of her time in solitude. There is nothing proud in her then. She stalks the gardens and gazes at my sisters and their servants, at their children. Hanging back, adjusting her clothing, putting on a haughty face when she is acknowledged, but it settles back into place once there are no eyes upon her.

Aphrodite hangs over her like a specter. This woman is hers, her toy, her slave, yes, Helen is a _slave_. And I am a slave, too. So we talk, insomuch as she ever has anything to say to me. I am detestable to her, I can tell. Her lips tug with a question she thinks is unseen, _is this wretched woman following me_? She gathers herself, not to be tainted, and keeps the hem of her dress from ever touching mine.

“You. You’re the fortuneteller, right?”

“Kassandra. Paris’ sister.”

“Of course. Read my palm, will you, Kassandra?”

There are days when I am tempted to devastate her, to tell her things I do not need her palm to know. I want to break her proud neck with promises of Paris’ death and Sparta’s hatred. _Mothers_ , I want to say, _mothers will tell their daughters not to be like Helen, daughter of Leda, the whore who killed ten thousand men_. But she does not need a palm reader or a fortuneteller to know these things, either.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The climax of the Helenus cycle. May do more with him, but this is where it comes to a head.

“Yes, fine, I am a coward. Does it please you to hear that, Princess? Kassandra of Troy, Daughter of Asia, Consort of Apollo, and Queen of the Worthless. Pardon me if I abstain from joining your court, O Majesty, I prefer the company of the living and the _sane_.”

“You — you are the only hope I have, the only hope our city has, Helenus, why? I have for you only questions, not prophecy, I only want to know _why_!”

“Why is all you ever ask me.”

“And nothing is all you ever tell me. You are more imperious than I.”

“Oh, am I? Do you ever see me blustering through the halls, spouting bloody filth and wailing when my betters see it fit to dismiss me? Do I not know when to yield? You are as vain in your misery as Paris in his beauty, but I — I need no attention to know that I am right.”

“And yet the city burns.”

“Just, be silent, be _silent_! You howling, moaning _bitch_ , I hate your every word, I curse your mouth and your already cursed tongue! You say we know the same things and you are right. So can you not fathom how much it pains _me_ to see our home destroyed? To see Troy in rubble? It may not burst upon me in fits, but I see it every night when I sleep and I know it is real too —”

“Then tell them!”

“Do you think they’ll believe me?”

“Yes!”

“Do they believe you? I am a seer, Kassandra, not a madman. I will not be treated as such. Perhaps you can suffer indignity, but I am not the same as you in all respects. Perhaps you are stronger, braver. Perhaps you are a fool. The message is stale, they’ve heard it time and again from the least reliable of sources, the fountain of information that spews from the mouth of a babbling lunatic. All its credibility is dried up, you’ve made it disappear. Our words would not be believed even if they came from Hector’s lips.”


End file.
